


To Give You Hope and a Future

by Page161of180



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Again, Eliot Waugh grieves, M/M, Not A Fix-It, and he will live a beautiful life, but an attempt to give them, current Eliot and mosaic Quentin talk, just a little bit of peace, post-4x13, warning: discussion of suicide and suicidal urges
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2020-01-20 14:58:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18527407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Page161of180/pseuds/Page161of180
Summary: When Quentin is back on terra firma, he brings his rough liver-spotted hand (he has an old man’s hands, it’s as weird as it is nice) to the smooth stone beneath the tree, giving the edge a long, loving pet, before squeezing the corner of the more weathered stone beside it. When he finally turns around, cracking his aching back as he does, the figure has reached the clearing, and come to a dead stop.Quentin does the same.Or, Eliot makes his way back to the mosaic, and two widowers discuss grief, peace, and the fact that the beauty of all life is something that we can carry with us. Always.





	To Give You Hope and a Future

**Author's Note:**

> I'll admit that I have had very mixed feelings about even writing this story. As I've said elsewhere, I categorically reject the narrative choices made by the show in the season 4 finale. I find them cruel and irresponsible, cheap and manipulative. I wrote a story about a month ago (back when I thought I was just noodling about with ideas of how the season could play out) called "You're a Story (I Can Follow)" which represents how Quentin and Eliot's story goes on, for me. And I told myself that, having already written that story, I wasn't going to write any fix-its or anything dwelling in the show canon, because I find what the show did so offensive that I frankly don't want to dignify it with trying to find some salvation in it. I decided that instead, I would write stories about these characters that reflect the story I think they deserve, show canon be damned.
> 
> But, as it turns out, I wasn't able to get to the place where I could write those stories, without writing this one first. Because, while I truly hate the show canon and have no intention of tuning back into see how season 5 plays out, I felt like I couldn't turn my back on it totally, until I had imagined Eliot in particular, who means so much to me, reaching some level of peace, even in the brutally punishing place the show has decided to bring him. Eliot's character is so important to me, and I'm honestly sick and tired of the narrative treating him as a repository for pain, hurt and rejected and deprived of love again and again, always after being led on by the narrative into think he may have found it. I don't want to think of Eliot having to move on without Quentin; he shouldn't have to. But I really can't bear to think of him mourning forever, and I also don't want to see Quentin reduced to the casualty that teaches Eliot how to be brave and accept love (TM). So, I sat for a while with the question of what would feel like realistic, meaningful closure on a love that will always be a part of Eliot. And as I thought about it, I realized that there's one character in canon who might be able to speak to Eliot about what it means to live without the peach to your plum. 
> 
> The conversation that Eliot and mosaic!Quentin have in this piece deals with grief, and also touches on issues of suicide and suicidal urges-- both in regards to Eliot's grief and in regards to Quentin's mental state at the time of his death. Given the trajectory we saw Quentin go down during season 4, it's hard for me to disentangle his mental health from his decision to sacrifice himself as easily as the show seemed to think it did. At the same time, I also wanted to find what peace there can be in the fact that, in at least one of the lifetimes that Quentin remembers living, he lives to be an old man and reaches a point where his struggles with his mental health, while always present, feel under his control. If any of that feels like not what you need to read right now, please take care of yourself. And also, if anything I've written on those issues (or others) feels wrong to you, please let me know. I'm not interested in treating any of this lightly; we've had enough of that. 
> 
> Despite the foregoing warnings, I found that, for me, writing this story brought me to a place of greater peace. Basically, if we lived in a world where we *had* to acknowledge the show's canon as the final word on these characters (which thankfully we do not), this is the conversation I'd need to imagine happening before I felt like I could exhale and let go. In putting this story out there, I'm in no way trying to give the showrunners an out or demonstrate that just because finding peace and beauty in the story they originally set out to tell is still possible, that the storyline they chose is valid or creatively rich. It's not, not to me. To me, it's cheap shocks at the expense of respect for beautiful characters, and the people who identify with them. This story exists only to find what light is possible in the mess that the show made. 
> 
> As a final note, the title of the piece comes from Jeremiah 29:11, "'For I know the plans I have for you,' says the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.'" I know and respect that Scripture isn't everyone's thing, for lots of valid reasons, but it's a verse that's important to me and that resonates with what I want to believe these characters can find.

  


When Quentin first notices the figure making its way through the trees, he thinks-- probably for the first time that didn’t involve El and his incorrigible smile and his big hands at the ties of Quentin’s pants ( _he smiles, thinking about it, he actually smiles_ )-- that he really hopes it’s not Teddy. Because Quentin loves Teddy with parts of his heart that he didn’t even realize existed before the day Arielle waddled out of the cottage, knocking over stacks of tiles like Godzilla leveling a city (a reference that Quentin was smart enough, even back then, not to try to explain, even without El’s warning head-shake), and placed first Quentin’s hand then El’s on her belly to feel Teddy’s first strong kicks. But Teddy’s gotten a lot bigger since then, and Quentin’s not altogether certain that his gentle soul of a son wouldn’t kick his old man all the same if he dropped by to find Quentin teetered precariously at the top of their old ladder, wrestling with a branch and a pruning knife in desperate need of sharpening.

 

He squints, and though the figure is still obscured by branches, he seems too tall to be Teddy, and too dark, in somber black. Quentin starts making his way down the ladder, all the same. The way he moves these days, he’ll be lucky to be back on the ground by the time tall, dark, and mysterious makes it to the clearing.

 

Quentin acknowledges the little extra thump his heart makes-- the I’m-having-an-emotion kind, not the I’m-having-something-worse kind; it’s a distinction he has to make these days-- at the phrasing, and the memory it invokes of, once again, that incorrigible smile, those big hands. The memories are like that, these days; they come, they hurt sometimes, they feel good sometimes, he nods as they pass.

 

When Quentin is back on terra firma, he brings his rough liver-spotted hand ( _he has an old man’s hands_ , _it’s as weird as it is nice_ ) to the smooth stone beneath the tree, giving the edge a long, loving pet, before squeezing the corner of the more weathered stone beside it. When he finally turns around, cracking his aching back as he does, the figure has reached the clearing, and come to a dead stop.

 

Quentin does the same.

 

His first thought is a stroke, even though they don’t call them that here in Fillory. For some reason, after almost sixty years, Earth-English is still his go-to for medical concerns, maybe because there’s a part of him that’s never stopped wondering, not really, about how it was for his father, at the end. His second thought, unsurprisingly, is brain tumor. His third thought, he never gets around to. Because the figure in the clearing  falls to his knees, bringing those big hands to cover his face, although they can’t muffle the gut-wrenching sobs. And there’s no version of _Eliot_ , real or imagined or symptom of a deeper medical issue, that Quentin could see like _that_ without taking into his arms.

 

It takes him longer to hobble over to the hunched figure, who’s ruining the knees of his nice black pants in the dirt, than it would have sixty years ago, or even ten. But when Quentin finally manages to kneel down next to him, his knees protesting the whole way, and manages to say “ _El?_ ’-- the words just barely making it past his lips-- he’s not all that surprised to learn that his arms feel as strong as they ever did, as they come up to wrap around shoulders more familiar than his own. They hold on tight.

  


 

 

It takes a while, to get Eliot-- because it _is_ Eliot, so fucking young and so fucking sad-- quieted to the point that Quentin can install him at the table, with a cup ( _his old cup_ ) of water. Quentin’s not sure whose hands are shaking worse.

 

“So the Earth-Fillory timelines are even more out of sync? That’s how you ended up so far in the future? And then how you ended up back here?”

 

Eliot nods at Quentin’s summary of the story he’d managed to get out between hiccuping breaths. It’s the easier part of the story to talk about, but not the part responsible for the “ _oh, Q_ ”’s soaked into the front of Quentin’s shirt.

 

“How are you going to get back?”

 

Eliot looks down at the table, guiltily. Does he really think, after all this time, that Quentin doesn’t know when he’s about to withhold information and play the dumbass tortured hero on his own?

 

“ _El_ ,” he warns.

 

El meets his eyes sheepishly. “There’s a spell,” he admits. “Margo worked it out to get back to Fen and Josh.”

 

His hazel eyes flash defiant-- and it’s not the point, _at all_ , but Jesus, it’s kind of nice to have proof that he really had been as gorgeous as Quentin remembers. Eliot had never stopped being handsome, obviously-- that would be impossible. Quentin used to tell him that, when Eliot would call himself a silver fox in that exaggerated way that meant he was feeling insecure at not being young and period-piece beautiful anymore. But Eliot in his twenties really was almost staggeringly attractive. It’s incredible the things you can take for granted, seeing them everyday. Because if the full force of Eliot’s whole _Eliot_ -ness had hit Quentin this hard back when they were both young and unsupervised, there’s no way Quentin would have lasted a full year without jumping him on the mosaic tiles.

 

“I don’t have to use it, though,” Eliot says, cutting through Quentin’s eighty-odd-years-old and still dick-driven inner monologue. Eliot’s eyes drop down to the table again. “Margo’s spell. I could stay.”

 

Quentin’s heart almost does stop at that, blurring the line between emotion and emergency until it almost doesn’t exist. Because _that_ \-- that is his husband, the man that he still wakes up every morning reaching for, and maybe always will, young and healthy and strong once more, asking Quentin to do it all again. It’s the wish that never goes away, not completely, even when the active grieving stops and he can smile when telling stories about Papa El to the grandkids and Teddy stops looking at him in that pinched and worried way every time he ends a visit. It’s the thing-- the only thing-- that one part of his soul will always _need_.

 

And Quentin can’t accept it.

 

He sighs and shuts his eyes, gathering as much strength as he has around himself. _Help me, El_. It’s natural as breathing, the not-quite prayer, to the person who taught him more about sucking it up and faking it til you make it than anyone else ever could. Who taught him more about the little ways you break your own heart over and again to take care of someone you love, too.

 

“ _Eliot_ ,” he begins, soft, and almost gets distracted by how fucking good it feels to say it _to_ someone, again. “I know you’re trying to process a lot of emotion, right now. But _this_ \--” he pauses to gesture at the little cottage in the middle of nothing where Eliot had grown up and old and died once, “--this isn’t _you_ , not anymore.”

 

It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently, because Eliot blanches even paler against the severe black of his suit. It’s a dramatic look, no doubt, but not in any of the ways he remembers Eliot being dramatic, back when he’d had access to boutiques and debit cards. There’s a hopelessness to him now, the man who even at his most mordant and pained, or in the Fillorian homespun that for years he’d grit his teeth every time he put on, had always been the most colorful thing Quentin had ever seen.

 

Quentin reaches for his hand, not sure if he’s quite ready to make contact, but Eliot jerks back anyway, eyes wildly betrayed.

 

“Eliot, I love you,” Quentin tries to explain, the words still his tongue’s most natural shape, “but this isn’t your _life,_ anymore--”

 

Eliot’s sneer is as vicious as it is immediate. So Quentin’s memory didn’t exaggerate how feral the younger version can be when hurting, either. “Well, _my_ life has nothing to offer, so--”

 

Quentin winces at the sentiment. He’s spent his whole life managing the dark thoughts and the impulses. It’s always been too easy to forget the way that Eliot has always had to fight them, too, dressing them up, as he does, and laughing at them, and shoving them behind beautiful curtains. Until they jump out raw and ugly as Quentin’s own, for all that they are draped in silks instead of medical coats.

 

“You have so much to live for, El. So much to offer,” he says, with silent apologies to every person who ever told him the same and ended up on the receiving end of his rolling eyes. It’s not the _right_ thing to say, but he’s never been good at saying the right things to Eliot, no matter how much he loves him. “I know how much it hurts right now,” he says, trying another tack.

 

But Eliot jumps out of his seat with a scoff. “You have _no_ idea how this feels.”

 

Quentin’s husband has come back to him, young and whole, and it takes less than an hour alone for Quentin to roll his eyes at him. He doesn’t bother with the obvious rejoinder, the fact that the cup of water that Eliot is still worrying in his hands has been touched by no one, served to no one, in eight years. Instead, he says, “You’re still so young. You can love again. I want that for you.”

 

He means it. It breaks his heart in pieces, but he means it.

 

Eliot recoils like Quentin’s slapped him. Worse, actually. Eliot learned to take a hit all too early in his life. Disgust sweeps over Eliot’s face, and Quentin braces himself for the verbal evisceration that’s sure to follow _that_ look. But then Eliot’s always-heartbreaking eyes fill again and he levels Quentin in a brand new way. “But you’re my soulmate,” he says, lost and quiet.

 

In the fifty years that Eliot Waugh lived by Quentin’s side, he made Quentin feel cherished in a way that Quentin never imagined a person like him would ever get to feel. He insulted every piece of clothing Quentin ever wore and second-guessed every design he proposed for that fucking mosaic. He shushed Quentin’s tears and kissed them away when needed. He raised Quentin’s son, and worshipped Quentin’s body, and would have surgically attached Quentin’s head to fit underneath his chin, if he could have. He was the only person in this world or any other that ever kissed the part in Quentin’s hair, and he did it like it was breathing.

 

The closest Eliot Waugh ever came to saying _the words_ was one afternoon that Quentin broke his leg and screamed and Eliot had torn out of the house in abject terror. Eliot had carried him on his back to the nearest healer, and when Quentin woke up from whatever good herbal shit they’d given him to knock him out, Eliot was porcelain-pale and shaking and he played it off by complaining that he’d pulled his groin hauling Quentin’s ass all over creation. Quentin thanked him, because sometimes being genuine with Eliot was the easiest way to defuse him, and Eliot had looked pointedly away and across the room and muttered, _well, I didn’t do it because I_ don’t _love you_.

 

And now, Eliot Waugh has looked Quentin in the eye and called him his soulmate.

 

Quentin makes himself keep his voice even as he holds out his hand, and says “Come here, honey.”

 

Eliot does. He lets Quentin bring Eliot’s head to his shoulder, the way El had done for him so many times. Quentin strokes through the long curls, speaking low and sweet while Eliot’s warm, slow tears pool against his protruding old-man collar bones.

 

“I know, sweetheart,” he says, using all the names that Eliot always called him. “You’re mine, too. We always will be. We just-- don’t get to be together, anymore.”

 

“ _It’s not fucking fair_ ,” El chokes out into his skin.

 

Quentin uses his free hand to catch his own tears before they can fall where Eliot will feel them. “It’s bullshit,” he agrees, adamant.

 

“He deserved so much more time,” Eliot says, with equal fervor.

 

Quentin agrees, and it makes him feel proud, somewhere in his center, to say “yeah,” and mean it. Because, from the way Eliot describes the decision his Quentin made, Quentin has his suspicions. But _this_ Quentin, here today. He knows that he deserves the long life he’s been given, and he loves it, even though he’ll always carry in him the parts of himself that screamed so loudly at 15, and 18, and 20 that even another day was too much. And Quentin hopes that whatever place this Eliot’s Quentin was in when he went into that mirror, he still held inside him the memory of being eighty-six and looking forward to his eighty-seventh birthday in a month.

 

“Do you think, somewhere, in one of these time loops, we got to be happy?” Eliot asks, his voice ragged and more curious than truly hopeful.

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Quentin answers, so forcefully that Eliot tips his face up, to look. His beautiful hazel eyes are still dripping and his long, handsome nose is red at the end, and Quentin has never meant anything more than when he says, “ _this one_.”

 

Eliot’s brows furrow and Quentin scratches at his scalp. “We got fifty years together, baby.” He doesn’t add that even that wasn’t enough. That a _hundred_ years wouldn’t have been enough. They both already know that.

 

“ _You_ got fifty years,” Eliot says. “My Q-- he didn’t even turn thirty.”

 

Quentin can feel that there’s more that Eliot needs to say, so he waits for him to say it. There’s a long pause before Eliot looks up at him again, guilty and reluctant, and admits, “He-- he wasn’t in a good place, when he died.”

 

Quentin knows himself, all versions, well enough that it’s not a complete surprise, but it still hits him in the gut to have his suspicions echoed.

 

“It’s my fault,” Eliot continues, in the taking-on-the-world’s-failings voice that Quentin had forgotten that he remembers so well.

 

“You know that’s bullshit,” Quentin says, automatically.

 

“It’s _not_ .” Eliot pulls back. “I told you about the monster, and how I got possessed. But that only happened because _I_ tried to shoot the monster, so that Q wouldn’t have guard its castle forever. It was _my fault_.”

 

Quentin tries to process Eliot’s words, he really does. But it’s been a long time since he was the young man who went on quests and fought with magical creatures. So what comes out in response to Eliot’s pained confession is, “Jesus, our twenties were exhausting.”

 

It’s just absurd enough that Eliot laughs, even though it quickly turns into more jagged tears. He wraps his arms around himself and folds over, and Quentin sighs and rubs his back in long, slow strokes. And that’s not a move he learned from Eliot. That’s one that Eliot learned from him.

 

“El,” he says gently, “what happens to Quentin, to me, I guess, when we go back to your timeline, it’s-- Jesus, it’s awful. It’s pointless, and it’s . . . _so_ unfair. For him. For _you_.”

 

His throat tightens at the thought of it, at how the beautiful, boring, fucked-up life he and Eliot and Arielle and Teddy and the grandkids have built here is all just a prelude to some unnecessary tragedy. Except that it’s _not_ . And he _won’t_ see it that way.

 

“But it’s-- you both remember this,” he goes on, needing Eliot to hear and to understand, “so _this_ , here, is your story, too. It always will be. He and me-- we’re the same. So, so--” He feels himself rambling, the too-passionate kid he’d once been again. Maybe it’s just that Eliot will always make him feel twenty-three and tongue-tied.

 

Maybe _he_ can make Eliot feel seventy-three and at _peace_.

 

“So, yeah, you have to live without him now,” Quentin tries, heart right on his sleeve, where it’s always been. “And I _hate_ that you do. But you _also_ live with him for fifty years. And, and, _El_ . You make him-- so fucking _happy_.”

 

Eliot breaks at that, and Quentin breaks right with him, but he keeps going, because Eliot needs this, and he needs Eliot to be okay. He always will. “And he dies way too young, your Q, but he also lives to be eighty-fucking-six and I swear to God, El, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I’ve got a birthday party next month and I’m going to the grandkids’ weddings and I’m not going to be making any big damn sacrifice plays. I’m going to die right over there in that bed where you hogged all the covers for fifty fucking years, unless I fall off the ladder trying to prune that fucking peach tree first. _Both_ things are true.”

 

“ _You_ were the one who always stole the covers,” Eliot finally says, even through his tears. And just for that, even if they were strangers who’d never shared a single other moment, Quentin would always, always love him. That love will never disappear, it will follow Eliot everywhere he goes, even if he lives another seventy years. And he _will_. Quentin won’t hear of anything else.

 

“I, um, I never told him,” Eliot says quietly, “When he and I got back our memories of this life, he asked me if I wanted to-- to give it a shot, and I--”

 

There’s a very strong possibility that Eliot will break down before he reaches the end of that sentence, so Quentin reaches out and places a gentle hand on the side of his face, stroking a thumb over his wet cheek. “You said no? Ran away? Decided it was all too good to be true and you’d fuck it up if you tried?” he prompts, as gently as he can.

 

The shock in Eliot’s eyes would be comical, if he wasn’t breaking Quentin’s heart.

 

“Eliot Waugh,” he says with a sigh. “I _know_ you. So he did, too. You’re a dumbass,” he says with every ounce of affection.  “You are a dumbass, and you love the _shit_ out of us. Always.”

 

“You knew?” Eliot just barely squeaks out.

 

And Quentin, at first, can only nod. “Yeah, baby. I knew.”

 

It’s like Quentin can actually see the weight lifting off of Eliot’s shoulders. He really is the dumbest of men. But he’s Quentin’s, and his heart is so good. He’ll make so many people happy.

 

“I know you’re not ready right now,” Quentin says, “but you have so much love inside you, El. And you’re the best father. And you’re gonna share that, again.”

 

“Is that a command?” Eliot still sounds miserable, but he’s stitching back together enough to sass Quentin again, and almost nothing has ever made Quentin so happy.

 

“Uh, yeah. Is that seriously a surprise after fifty years?”

 

Eliot’s quivering mouth edges ever closer to a smile, and Quentin makes himself look away from the lips he still dreams about, because this isn’t about that.

 

“I wish I had told him,” Eliot says, with the new honest way of his that Quentin is almost glad he hadn’t quite developed during their lifetime, because Quentin is pretty much powerless against it. “I was-- I really wanted to _tell_ him.”

 

Quentin’s whole chest burns. And he decides, in a moment, that it’s absolutely okay that when he reaches for his husband’s hands and brings them to his own whiskered cheeks, and says, “So tell him,” that he’s not sure which one of them it’s really for.

  


 

 

Eliot is climbing down from the ladder, pruning knife in one hand, muttering acidly. He’s going to go home, and that’s okay. It has to be. But he insisted on doing one more thing to take care of Quentin, before he does.

 

“Jesus, this thing is a bitch,” he says, when he’s back with Quentin on the ground. He loosened his tie a little and rolled his sleeves up before he climbed the ladder, and the familiar tone of his skin makes the harsh black of his clothes feel a little warmer-- even if he’s still sickly pale in a way that Quentin can’t quite bear.

 

“Well,” Quentin says with a sigh, “I planted it for you. After.”-- they both know what it was after-- “What else could it be but absurdly tall and high maintenance?”

 

Eliot doesn’t say anything, but he cranes his neck to take in the tree, over both their heads. _You see_ , Quentin wants to tell him, _it really does go on._ But he thinks the message has been received.

 

When Eliot looks away from the tree, he toes the patchy grass with his boot, before looking back up at Quentin, with all that banked longing that Quentin got to see everyday for fifty years. And unlike Eliot’s beautiful twenty-something visage, _that_ was one thing that never stopped knocking Quentin flat on his ass.

 

“So you have no excuses now,” Eliot is saying. “You’re gonna throw out that ladder and die in bed. But not a day before 95.”

 

Quentin smiles softly. “Now who’s bossy?”

 

“I’m not bossy, I’m your king,” Eliot banters, and it’s so obviously an attempt at playing brave, but it’s true all the same. He is Quentin’s king. He always will be.

 

“You’ll think about what I said?” Quentin makes himself prod, voice a little gravelly. “I’m serious, El. I’m gonna be disappointed if you have any less than six ex-husbands when I see you in the Underworld.”

 

The way Eliot’s eyes go wide tell Quentin what he already knows, that Eliot has thought about that meeting before, that some days it’s all that gets him through. It’ll be that way for a while, probably, Quentin knows. But not always.

 

“You, me, my six husbands, your wife,” Eliot says gamely, in spite of the shimmering of his eyes. “It’s a date.”

 

It won’t always be the thought that gets him through the day, but it will always be a beautiful one. Quentin’s heart flutters. “You got it,” he says. “But not too soon. Same rules go for you: 95 or bust.”

 

A tear does escape Eliot’s eye at that, but he doesn’t break down again. “I’ll do my best,” he says, a little weak, but determined. It’s enough.

 

Quentin reaches up to frame his face, because he thought he’d already had his last chance. But it turns out he gets this one more. And he’ll take it. “Fortunately,” he says, when Eliot has rested their foreheads together with an audible exhale, “your best is _spectacular_.”

 

And Quentin goes up on his tiptoes then, like he has so many times before, to kiss Eliot’s forehead, because it’s the only thing he has to crown him with, this time.

 

Eliot doesn’t seem to mind the substitution. Quentin pulls away, slower than he probably should, but Eliot grabs him by the elbows, tenderly-- like he remembers the precautions necessary when holding old bones, Because he does. Because they are forever branded by the lives they lived together. All four of them are.

 

“ _Hey_ ,” Eliot says, with the ghost of a smile, before he leans down and kisses Quentin, soft and sweet enough that the little bit of saltwater doesn’t matter. Quentin opens his eyes mid-kiss and there are those hazel eyes, swimming. They deserved a thousand lifetimes together. But they will be okay. Because this never dies, not really.

 

When Eliot finally draws back, he looks as shell-shocked as when Quentin kissed him for the first time a lifetime ago. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “I just-- one last time.”

 

“For now,” Quentin corrects. Then he laughs a little, because he doesn’t want to cry when he’s sending Eliot back to his world to do the hardest thing. “I sort of thought you’d think I looked like your grandpa, or something.”

 

Eliot shakes his head, not bothering to wipe away the tears that make their way down his cheeks to melt into the corners of his beautiful smile. He’s staring at Quentin with all the devotion he always has, the devotion he’s going to share with some other lucky bastards some day, and Quentin knows what he’s seeing-- the wrinkles and the white whiskers and the age spots. “You’re the most beautiful Quentin I can imagine,” he says.

 

And at that point, Quentin thinks he’s justified in crying just a little. Especially because he manages to add, “You don’t have to imagine.”

 

Eliot’s smile goes even gentler and he takes a deep breath, the bravest man Quentin has ever known, as he bears himself up to his full, regal height. But it turns out Quentin is-- there’s one more thing, before he can let go, again. He grabs Eliot’s arm, encased in its mourning black, pausing him on his journey.

 

Quentin pulls a heavy peach from the branch closest to him. It’s too early for it, but Quentin uses a little magic. Because sometimes the world is shitty, and you have to make yourself ready for things that it’s way too early for.

 

He holds the peach out to Eliot, who shies away, shaking his head.

 

“Q, I can’t--”

 

But Quentin grabs his hand and places the peach in his palm, folding those long elegant fingers over its tender skin. “Take it with you,” he says, gentle but firm. “And no throwing this one in any fires.”

 

Eliot’s eyebrows bunch up then turn down, helplessly.

 

Quentin looks over their heads meaningfully, at the tree that shades his husband and his wife’s graves, growing strong and sweet from things Quentin didn’t think he’d survive, and shouldn’t have had to. Then he looks back at that same husband, young and beautiful and deserving the whole world.

 

“The pits-- they’re seeds, El,” he tells his farm boy, who’s always understood even better than Quentin how to nurture things. He’ll see that in himself, one day, Quentin knows it. “You’ll make them grow.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. To the extent stories can help with the betrayal that a lot of us are feeling, I hope this one does. And I really do believe their story is ours to tell, however we believe it should go. If you want to talk in the comments, I'm here.


End file.
